Preliminary market share data from iSuppli Corp. highlights that Samsung’s rivals in the NAND flash memory market are gaining market share at the market leader’s expense in the third quarter of 2007. Samsung only achieved bit growth of 4 percent in the quarter. Samsung’s NAND market share declined to 40.2 percent, down from 45.4 percent in the previous quarter. 

Hynix had the strongest revenue growth on a sequential basis, rising 79.1 percent to $806 million compared to $450 million in the second quarter.

“Hynix’s big sequential jump in NAND revenue was due to its stunning unit shipment growth of 92 percent compared to the second quarter,” said Nam Hyung Kim, Director and Chief Analyst, memory ICs/storage systems for iSuppli. “Meanwhile, Micron’s and Intel’s explosive growth was due to the companies ramping up production at their NAND manufacturing joint venture: IM Flash Technologies LLC (IMFT).”

With IMFT continuing to ramp NAND production aggressively, Micron experienced a 75.5 percent rise in revenues to reach $285.4 million, up from $162.6 million in the second quarter.

Intel’s part of the JV saw revenues rising by 47.9 percent to reach $132 million, up from $89.3 million in the second quarter. On a yearly basis, Intel’s revenues from NAND grew 222 percent compared to the third quarter of 2006 as the production ramp was at an early phase. Toshiba maintained its market share of 27.2 percent in the third quarter, according to the market research firm.

Samsung’s actual bit growth reached only 4 percent during the third quarter, missing its guideline for a low double-digit rise, which was issued at the company’s second-quarter investor call.

Toshiba maintained its market share of 27.2 percent in the third quarter. The top three suppliers dominated the market with a combined 87 percent market share during the quarter.  

Overall, iSuppli said that NAND flash revenue in the third quarter rose to $4.2 billion, up 37 percent from $3 billion during the same period in 2006. Unit shipments rose by 31 percent with ASPs actually rising by 5 percent in the quarter.

However, this is not expected to continue as the main selling season is over and continued capacity ramps are expected to cause prices to fall by 18 percent this quarter.